People Search

Exa’s people search lets you search over 1B+ professional profiles using natural language. The index is refreshed weekly and combines semantic search with structured attributes including role, skill, company, location, and seniority. Read Introducing Exa’s People Search Benchmarks for more detail.

For agentic list-building and enrichment out of the box, use Websets →.

When to Use

Use People Search to build:

A recruiting or talent-sourcing platform
- Search candidates by role, skill set, location, or employer
- “senior ML engineers in Seattle with PyTorch experience”
- “full-stack developers with React and Node.js”
A GTM intelligence or sales prospecting tool
- Find decision-makers and buying-committee members at target accounts
- “VP Engineering at Series B fintech companies”
- “enterprise sales reps from Salesforce in EMEA”
A professional services or consulting workflow
- Map leadership and org charts at companies you’re researching for clients
- “CTO at fintech startups in New York”
An AI SDR or outbound agent
- Enrich prospect lists with up-to-date titles, companies, and career context
- “product managers at Microsoft”

Basic Usage

curl -s -X POST https://api.exa.ai/search \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $EXA_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "query": "CEO of AI search startups in San Francisco",
    "category": "people",
    "type": "auto",
    "numResults": 10
  }' | jq

from exa_py import Exa

exa = Exa()

results = exa.search(
    "CEO of AI search startups in San Francisco",
    category="people",
    type="auto",
    num_results=10
)

import Exa from "exa-js";

const exa = new Exa();

const results = await exa.search(
  "CEO of AI search startups in San Francisco",
  {
    category: "people",
    type: "auto",
    numResults: 10,
  }
);

Structured Entity Metadata

People Search returns structured person metadata in entities for result rows that resolve to a person. Each person entity has type: "person", a stable id, a schema version, and a properties object with person profile fields.

{
  "results": [
    {
      "title": "Jane Doe - VP Engineering",
      "url": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/janedoe",
      "entities": [
        {
          "id": "person_...",
          "type": "person",
          "version": 1,
          "properties": {
            "name": "Jane Doe",
            "firstName": "Jane",
            "lastName": "Doe",
            "location": "San Francisco, California, United States",
            "workHistory": [
              {
                "title": "VP Engineering",
                "location": "San Francisco, California, United States",
                "dates": { "from": "2022-01-01", "to": null },
                "company": { "id": "company_...", "name": "Example AI" }
              }
            ],
            "educationHistory": [
              {
                "degree": "BS Computer Science",
                "dates": { "from": "2010", "to": "2014" },
                "institution": { "id": null, "name": "Stanford University" }
              }
            ]
          }
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}

Try it now: People Search in the API Playground →

API

Data

MCP

SDKs

Integrations

Agentic payments

Admin

Additional Resources

People Search

When to Use

Basic Usage

Structured Entity Metadata

​When to Use

​Basic Usage

​Structured Entity Metadata

When to Use

Basic Usage

Structured Entity Metadata